Introducing Basuto Quay
Entry posted by magmouse in Basuto Quay
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The concept
I have mentioned on this blog and elsewhere on the forum the concept for Netherport: a fictional port on the Dorset coast, roughly where the real Bridport/West Bay is, with a GWR terminus, set in 1908. I imagine Netherport to be an established port, with coastal and cross-channel traffic, and a growing role as a seaside resort, and as an alternative route to northern France and on to Paris via Cherbourg.
This concept has developed over time, as I gradually worked out what I wanted in a layout, including:
- South coast location - I am drawn to the small ports around Cornwall, but I find the architecture a bit dull. For me, Dorset is the sweet spot between the rugged coast of the west, and the more varied and characterful vernacular architecture of the south and south-east coast.
- Not just a model of a railway, but also of a place. I want to represent the port and the town as well as the station and its associated facilities.
- A series of 'zones', including:
- the station
- a quayside with one or more ships
- the town, with a prosperous 'upper town' and a more scruffy area around the waterfront
- a foundry/engineering works, 'Hunt and Son', as the justification for my father's PO wagon of that name, and to justify a wider range of traffic such as pig iron and sheet metal in, and various manufactured goods out (agricultural implements and machinery, miscellaneous cast iron goods, etc.).
Such a layout to S7 standards would take considerable space, and is not an option in our current house. It's possible, indeed, that the Netherport I have just described may remain fictional in more than one sense. However, the possibility of a smaller layout has recently emerged. If Netherport is the yet-to-be produced double-LP concept album, then Basuto Quay is perhaps the demo tape...
The Space
At the top of our outer-London terrace house, there is an attic room which is currently used for storage, and a major clear-out recently has made space available for a layout. Here is the room, during the clearout:
There will still be a need to use the room to store quite a lot of stuff, and the sloping ceiling is an added limitation. As a result, the available space for a layout is 4.15m long and 0.8m wide, running the length of the room under the window. The 80cm width allows for a bit of space between the back of the layout and the sloping ceiling, so there is some headroom for buildings and a backscene.
The height of the baseboards is set at 80cm to the underside, to allow storage space beneath. Assuming a 10cm structure depth, that gives a layout ground level of 90cm. In principle, I favour eye-level viewing, or close to it. However, in this context increasing the height would reduce the available width because of the sloping ceiling, and increasingly block the window. At 90cm, a seated position gives something close to eye level, and standing allows one to reach the back of the layout, which is essential for me as I use three-link couplings.
Basuto Quay
With the space determined, I started to think about how I could adapt the Netherport concept to fit. A list of desired features gradually developed, in the following rough priority order:
- Quayside siding
- Ship at the quayside - with the siding populated by wagons, these first two items should form the central image of Basuto Quay, literally and figuratively)
- Hunt and Son works
- A small station platform
- General warehouses
- Harbour Master’s office, similar to the one in Poole
- Dovetail Removals and Storage warehouse
- End and side loading dock - for horse box and carriage truck
- A view out to sea
- A 'cut away' goods shed to provide interesting lighting and photo possibilities
- Coal staithes
- Multiple places for wagons to go out of view
- Goods arrival siding
A series of sketches juggled this rather long list, trying to see how much would fit into the space. In the end, I was able to accommodate all but the last three. At the same time, a back-story slowly emerged: with the development of Netherport as a coastal resort and cross-channel port, part of the harbour was redeveloped to accommodate passenger steamers, and named Basuto Quay. A short extension to the railway from Netherport station and the existing harbour railway network provided a direct passenger connection to the steamer terminal, with a simple platform and ticket office. Selected branch trains run through from Netherport itself, to connect with the steamers.
With things being very tight for space, and the sloping ceiling complicating the planning of the backscene and buildings, I decided to model the layout in 3D. This was also a good excuse to get to grips with Fusion 360, which I have been wanting to do for a while. Here is an overview of the layout, showing its key features:
And an eye-level view from one end (similar to the photo of the room above):
And from the other end - you won't be able to see this view in reality, as you would need to be inside the cupboard:
The layout has three main zones. To the left, there is a more industrial area, with a GWR goods shed, cut away so we can see the inside (a nod to @Mikkel's similar, and beautiful, representation). Next to that, a gap where the line comes through from the fiddle yard, and then the Hunt and Son factory and an adjacent warehouse.
The right-hand end of the layout has the station, with a small platform and a group of older buildings behind: the harbour office, warehouses, a ship's chandler and a pub. Beyond is the sea, and the harbour light provides a visual punctuation.
Seen in both the above pictures, the third zone, in the middle, is the quayside, with a sailing ship docked, masts silhouetted against the sky.
In my next post, I will show the track layout, and I will be particularly interested to get feedback on that - I am more of a maker than an operator, but I am hoping I have come up with something that will provide some shunting challenges without being frustrating to operate. If it is even slightly prototypical, that will be a bonus!
Before signing off for now, a couple of final comments. You may well have detected some connections between what I have designed and John Ahern's famous Madderport. Most obviously, the Poole harbour office is directly taken from Madderport, and the idea of the harbour light is similar. Indeed, the name of my Netherport concept is a hat-tip to Ahern. Of the many things that impress and delight me about Madderport is the way Ahern was able to combine so many different scenes into remarkably little space, without it ever feeling forced or awkward. If I can achieve something half as good with Basuto Quay, I shall be well satisfied.
Lastly, why Basuto Quay? In my twenties, I built a minimum-space P4 layout set in a fictitious corner of West London. I named it Basuto Road, partly because there is a real road of that name (though it is more Fulham than Bayswater), but mostly because Basuto Road features in a play called Benefactors, by Michael Frayn. My wife-to-be and I toured a small scale production of the play around village halls and arts centres in Wiltshire soon after we met while working at the Salisbury Playhouse together, and around the time I was building the layout. For this new layout, Basuto Quay seemed an obvious choice, connecting back to that earlier effort, some 37 years ago.
Nick.
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